Treat yourself to good books!

Main menu

Post navigation

Review | Depth of Field, Chantel Guertin

At the end of the first Pippa Green novel, Pippa had just won admission to the prestigious two week Tisch Photography Camp. Depth of Field picks up pretty much where the last left off, and some of the threads left hanging in the first book are resolved here.

The Tisch Photography Camp is Pippa’s dream come true, mostly because it’s in the same school her father graduated from. Unfortunately, while her boyfriend Dylan and best friend Dace were originally going to come to New York with her, both had to back out at the last minute. Instead of the fun NYC trip she’d planned, Pippa was stuck with the annoying Ben Baxter, who used her work to cheat his way into the programme.

Part of it may that I’m just too old for this kind of drama, but the entire time Pippa complained about her boyfriend and best friend being out of reach for the two week camp, all I could think of is that it’s just two weeks. You can survive two weeks — grow up.

Depth of Field is better than the first book — we learn a bit more about Pippa’s relationship with her father, and why photography is so important to her. The photography projects in this book were also more interesting, and I especially love the group of students who did a pigeon’s eye view series of the city. I wish the photography angle had been explored more. For an experience that had been such a dream for Pippa, we learn a lot more about her life outside the camp than about photography lessons she’d learned.

The book is written well, and a quick entertaining read. I only wish the story had been a little less predictable. For example, Pippa gets to know Ben a bit better in this book, and realizes he’s much more complex than she’d originally thought. Personally, I think his reason still doesn’t excuse his actions in the first book, and I much prefer Dylan’s witty flirtation to Ben’s complete 180 into a sensitive guy. But Dylan isn’t answering Pippa’s calls, and Ben’s turning out to be a tortured soul, so you do the math. With Pippa so adamant that Ben would ruin her Tisch experience and with Ben so bafflingly nice to her from the beginning, it seemed pretty obvious where this was headed. And normally, I may not mind, except Pippa’s cluelessness throughout just got annoying.

Beyond Ben, Pippa’s also dealing with David, her Tisch mentor and a renowned photographer with unexpected ties to her parents’ past. The truth is a bit of a surprise, though to be honest, he seemed so sleazy that I was expecting something much more sinister — a sign, clearly, that I need to stop reading/watching all those creepy psychological thrillers.

To Pippa’s disappointment, one of the most important things she learns from her mentor is that he’s unprofessional and a flake. This leads to one of the most unbelievable twists in the series yet, which, I’m sorry to say, is pure wish fulfillment. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s impossible that such a thing would happen, but it’s highly unlikely and sets Pippa up as a special snowflake type of heroine.

This is unfortunate, because when it comes to realism, Guertin is amazing at capturing depth of emotion. When Pippa wears a Tisch sweatshirt in memory of her father for her first day at Camp, for example, or when she has a breakthrough for her final Tisch project — these are all beautifully written moments, and they ground the story. Even when Pippa has a series of misadventures in various projects for Camp, it’s fun to read, and the reader can relate to the feeling of being out of your depth in a big city. And while I didn’t like the predictability of Ben’s storyline, there’s a moment when he pursues his own reasons for going to New York, and it’s sad, and I wish more had been done with it.

With both the books in the series, there’s a lot going on and a lot of real emotion being explored, and yet there’s always at least one big scene that feels completely false and takes me right out of Pippa’s world. The photography aspect is great, and I think girls who dream of becoming professional photographers themselves will enjoy reading about Pippa Greene. The ending of this book sets up for a sequel, and I’d be curious to see where Guertin takes Pippa’s story next.

+

Thank you to ECW Press for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.